Has anyone experimented with using a different carafe? Are there any carafes anyone knows of which have the bump on top which opens the brew basket's valve, or an easy hack which would work?

Now that I am resigned to cleaning the brew head after each pot, the carafe is my last real pain point with the Brazen. It's a minor nuisance: not actually messy, now that I've learned to pour it at an aggressive angle, but the unpredictable dribble towards the end of the pot bothers my perfectionism. I'm hoping that some third party winds up producing an improved, compatible carafe.

I just received a 12 lb shipment (actually, 6 -2 lb. samplers) from Sweet Maria's. I based my purchases on their published 'cupping wheel' and other description, in which aroma, flavours, intensity are attributed to a particular bean, such as: heavy, bright, juicy, fig, tangerine, blueberry, tobacco, old leather, creosote, etc.

Now, cupping is done in a specific way, according to a set protocol. Often, beans are cupped at different roast levels, but my understanding is that the grinds, water temperatures, brew times, etc., are executed the same.

And throughout this thread there are examples of optimizing all the variables that are FIXED in the cupping process.

There should be a bottom line to this post but I'm not sure what. Is the cupping system due for an overhaul, considering available 'new technology'?

I just received a 12 lb shipment (actually, 6 -2 lb. samplers) from Sweet Maria's. I based my purchases on their published 'cupping wheel' and other description, in which aroma, flavours, intensity are attributed to a particular bean, such as: heavy, bright, juicy, fig, tangerine, blueberry, tobacco, old leather, creosote, etc.

Now, cupping is done in a specific way, according to a set protocol. Often, beans are cupped at different roast levels, but my understanding is that the grinds, water temperatures, brew times, etc., are executed the same.

And throughout this thread there are examples of optimizing all the variables that are FIXED in the cupping process.

There should be a bottom line to this post but I'm not sure what. Is the cupping system due for an overhaul, considering available 'new technology'?

Great question, Jerry. I'm not an experienced cupper but I'm trying to learn. I picked up Ted Lingle's Coffee Cupper's Handbook which is very detailed and comprehensive, took the Defect Cupping class at the SCAA Symposium, and have dabbled at home.

Cupping is very interesting because you actually will look for different things in the cup as the coffee cools. I created a spreadsheet which showed the categories based on temp and time to help me understand this. You will acutally look for the sweetness, uniformity, and clean cup in coffee after it has cooled below 100°F, usually after 10+ minutes but you'll judge the flavor, acidity, aftertaste, body, and balance while the coffee is still hot (140-160°F) usually between 8 and 10 minutes. Working backwards to the beginning, you judge the wet aroma when you break the crust after about 3 - 5 minutes.

When I've done cupping on just 5 coffees (with three samples each), I'm amazed at how much time it takes me to work my way around the table. I know you take several passes but it's hard to hit all the cups while the coffee is in the normal range (140-160°F). Standard cupping calls for five cups of each coffee to allow you to judge uniformity and tell if you get a defect showing up in a cup if it's just in one cup or all the cups. I usually use three cups to make the process more manageable. Cupping is also more about selecting different coffees for buying, blending, or roasting decisions and doesn't work very well for just a single cup. It's a great tool to pick out which coffees, roasts, or blends are better by comparison.

There was a blog post by Jim Hoffmann, I believe about how fault tolerant cupping is to temperature and time. Basically he found that the coffee doesn't over-extract just sitting there after the break and that the cupping isn't terribly critical of temperature.

I think there's a big difference, though, between cupping and drinking coffee. When you drink coffee you're not spending a lot of time over the cup with your nose down in it and slurping off a spoon. You're not going to want to wait over 10 minutes before you can tell if your coffee has good sweetness. You want to enjoy your coffee at it's peak when you drink it. It's interesting that when the Palo Blanco brewed at 205°F cooled after I'd drunk most of it the sweetness that I'd experienced when I had the Barista prepare it in a V60 at the cafe the day before appeared but when I brew it at 203°F it was much sweeter when first served.

Here's a couple of James Hoffmann blog posts that talk about cupping protocol robustness that I found interesting:

As for overhauling the cupping process, when you have a table with say 12 or 20 different coffees, each with 5 samples think about the logistics of brewing all these cups the same using a brewer. I think that the simple process of cupping with cups or bowls works pretty well for this process. You'd be amazed at how much water you use for a full cupping. You'd better have a lot of kettles going and probably several people going around and pouring.

That being said, I know that there are people who use pour-over brewers rather than cupping when they evaluate coffees. You have to find what works for you.

But if you want to cup at home, you can do it with three to five coffees and fewer samples. It's great for comparison and learning. I roasted the Sweet Maria's El Salvador Manzano Process Experiment where you got a washed, natural, and pulp natural green and I cupped this coffee side-by-side and was amazed at the differences. I only did one sample per coffee then (Jan 2011) and wrote it up on my (neglected) blog.

I purchased a Cuisinart DCC-12PBRC 12-Cup carafe (Click Here (www.amazon.com)) by mistake a few years ago and kept it. It's a very tight fit, but it works if you put the pot in first and then the basket, or if you don't put the pot in all the way.

After using the BraZen for two months, I've settled on the following: - grind - a little bit coarser than regular salt - filter - mostly Melita brown paper - beans/water - ratio of 1:19 - temperature - for an unfamiliar bean I start at 200 F - pre-soak - 120 seconds minus 10 seconds for each day after the roast date

I've been leaving my Brazen set to 205 lately and it's been working well for me for several different coffees right up until yesterday. I went from brewing Chromatic Coffee's great Kenya Mukuyuni Peaberry to Barefoot Coffee's Guatemala Palo Blanco and the resulting cup was a bit flat and missing the nice apple notes and acidity until the cup was starting to cool significantly. I brewed the same coffee today with the same grind setting but at 203 instead and the coffee was quite a bit sweeter right out of the pot.

I'm wanting to get my wife a new coffee maker as she really likes different coffees etc. I'm considering the Brazen as I'd like to get her a really nice one, but want to make sure it's not too complicated. How hard is it to find the right temp and soak time? I mean, would you need to go through 10 pots to find the right temp etc, and have to do something like keep a log of what coffee gets a particular setting?

I will say that I'm not a real coffee drinker myself, so I might be over analyzing things :)

I don't think it's too complicated, the settings are easy to change and are saved even if you unplug the brewer or have a power failure so once you find a temperature that you like and a soak time, you could leave it at that as a baseline. If you feel that the coffee isn't tasting the best you could try a pot a couple degrees cooler or hotter and it should only take two or three pots to decide if it's a noticeable improvement.

How fresh is the coffee your wife orders? If it's roast dated and you're brewing it the same week that it was roasted then you may want to pay more attention to the soak time to make sure it's long enough to allow the wet coffee grounds to give up the carbon dioxide gas and settle down before brewing otherwise you could end up overflowing the basket. I don't change my soak time much unless I know I have a really fresh coffee or a relatively old coffee and then I'll make it longer or shorter respectively to match the coffee.

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